Speech by Minister Micheál Martin at the Ulster Bank Commercial Services / Irish Independent Business Achievers Awards

1 December 2005

I am delighted to have been invited here today to present the Business Achievers Awards for 2005. It is always encouraging to see proactive entrepreneurship being recognised and I would like to express my appreciation to the joint sponsors, Ulster Bank Commercial Services and the Irish Independent for their generosity in sponsoring these awards.

In my view, entrepreneurs are not just dynamic individuals with a good story to tell about their experience. They play a crucial role in the economy by creating new products and providing new jobs. Entrepreneurship is critical to the Irish economy and entrepreneurial businesses make a significant contribution to regional economies and to society as a whole. Furthermore, entrepreneurship is critical to Irish competitiveness as new services, products and processes increase efficiency, thereby improving the competitive strength of the economy as a whole.

The present Government is committed to supporting local enterprise. We have worked hard over the past eight years to keep taxes, interest rates and inflation down. This has enabled us to provide industry with a stable economy in which to operate. The level of entrepreneurship in Ireland is among the highest in the EU. The information available in respect of 2004 shows that almost 8% of the working age population were engaged in entrepreneurial activity, that is, either actively planning to establish a new business or having already recently done so. The rate of establishment of new high export and growth potential businesses is currently running at 60 every year. I applaud each and every one of these new start-ups and I am confident that the number of these start-ups will continue to increase, creating an ever more vibrant indigenous sector. After all, these new start-ups are the Business Achievers of the future.

I know that a key focus of Enterprise Ireland’s strategy Transforming Irish Industry 2005-2007 is the encouragement and support of the development of a seedbed of dynamic Irish enterprises. State support for entrepreneurship, through Enterprise Ireland, is channelled to assist the creation of new entrepreneur led business underpinned by a business model based on market knowledge, innovation, export sales and internationalisation. To maximize the development potential of export oriented indigenous enterprises, Enterprise Ireland offers start-up and growing firms assistance with Strategy, Sales and Marketing, Innovation and R&D; Production and Operations, Management Development and Skills and Finance.

The Business Achievers here today represent this dynamic cadre of Irish entrepreneurs. Almost without exception, their companies’ competitive advantages lie in knowledge and technology. Sectors represented today include applied software, digital media, electronics, consumer foods, medical devices, life sciences and emerging technologies.

I was interested to note that many of the business achievers here today represent companies which are located outside our main cities, with one from each of counties Carlow, Limerick, Galway, Dublin, Sligo, Wexford, Westmeath, Louth, and I’m pleased to say… two from Cork! Such companies have very positive secondary effects in the local economy. They generate employment and incomes that enable people to live locally, spend and invest locally. Their demand for goods and services in the local economy in turn sustains the viability of other local businesses.

The variety of businesses setting up in this country every year can be seen in this room today.

As I look around I see that the Technology sector is represented by Netwatch, the alarm technology company in Carlow, Aontec Teoranta from Galway, which is a radio frequency identification device company, AMT,which produces aviation software, Selatra, the computer games company from Mahon in Cork .

I am pleased to see that the food sector has two companies here today. They are Pallas Foods producing quality frozen foods in Newcastle West, Co. Limerick and Cully and Sully from Cork. BioClin in Athlone, the clinical study, design and pharmaceutical analysis company represents Science. Representing manufacturing, we have Avenue Mouldmaking from Sligo, Bellurgan Precision Engineering in Dundalk along with the waste mangement company, ACE Compaction, from Wexford.

In my view, the fact that you continue to increase turnover, provide employment and, in many cases, create products and services for export, makes each and every one of you winners in your own right.

As we all know, increased globalisation and market access offers potentially boundless opportunities for ambitious Irish enterprises. Continually exploring and exploiting the prospects offered by existing export markets and newer markets such as Central and Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia will be very important to your future growth. I know that many of you already trade in these markets and are in the process of breaking into new markets.

In my opinion, a critical issue for Irish start-up and growing firms is the ability to sell and export their products to foreign markets. In August this year, I announced the launch of a new and unique international sales capability development programme ‘International Selling’ that is being made available to Irish companies. The programme, a joint initiative between Enterprise Ireland and FÁS, incorporates world-wide best practice in international selling and is unique to Ireland. It builds and expands on the existing models of the Overseas Graduate Programme managed by FÁS and the Export Orientation Programme managed by IBEC.

The development and sale of high value added innovative products and services demanded by customers around the world are central to maintaining a competitive edge. To this end, Enterprise Ireland continues to work intensively with Irish entrepreneurs, companies and research institutions, offering a range of Research and Development supports, to ensure that innovative ideas of today become the products and services that give Irish companies an international competitive advantage into the future. And while I am delighted to say that Enterprise Ireland has helped many of the companies here today, it is the vision, the determination and the hard work of the entrepreneurs that, in the end, make these businesses a success, irrespective of their industry sectors.

I would like to thank Ulster Bank and the Irish Independent for inviting me here today and for their continued sponsorship of these prestigious awards. I extend my congratulations to each and every one of you on your achievements to date and wish you and your businesses every success for the future.

Ends

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